


and like a new home (i swear i can feel my heartbones settling)

by OfShoesAndShips



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6840463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonathan Strange does not miss his wife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and like a new home (i swear i can feel my heartbones settling)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry about how rushed this is but I wanted to Acheive Something today and my dad is picking me up in half an hour, after which I won't be able to write, so.

The issue is, of course, is that they only have each other.

 

 

There’s nothing aside from the books and the darkness to  distract them from it. At first, the space around them echoes with it - they aren’t quite sure, even after all these years, how to  _ be  _ around each other. There has always been a separation, and now there isn’t. Arabella, for one, but even just the world around them seemed to conspire to hold them at arm’s length from each other. He has the feeling that if he didn’t resent it then he shouldn’t resent it now, but he does.

 

 

Hurtfew is so quiet, so cold, so full of little random drafts that he feels more unsettled by that than even the Darkness.

 

 

Norrell tells him, one day early on, that he has lived through darker seasons than even this. But Jonathan had been expecting something like Ashfair, thick warm walls and panelling and plaster and his feet echoing on the stairs. Hurtfew is not Ashfair. Hurtfew muffles every sound he makes, and the air he breathes is just as jagged in its coldness as Norrell’s vowels when he’s angry.

 

 

He thinks how strange it is that he misses Ashfair more than Arabella. It reminds him vaguely of the times he took one of the horses and rode across the border, how different Wales had felt to Shropshire even though it looked no different, as if there was a taste in the air.

 

 

There is a taste to the Northern air that there wasn’t to Shropshire, and he feels so ill at ease with it that even Norrell is beginning to notice it, though he never speaks of it.

 

 

As unsure as he is about Norrell, the chill he feels in Hurtfew vanishes when they’re in the same room. 

 

 

It doesn’t make sense. Jonathan thinks he should feel Arabella’s absence more than he does. He doesn’t ache with it like he did during the war, and he isn’t tiptoeing around it like he did after she died, keeping his back to the deep, sickening loss. 

 

 

He doesn’t see much difference in Norrell, either. Norrell is much the same as ever - in fact he seems rather more cheerful, what with no longer having to cater to the whims of a society that has no desire to accept him. 

 

 

\--

 

 

For the first few days, expecting distance, they make it - uneasy, quiet, cold. And then they realise that the ghosts they thought they’d feel between them aren’t there at all. 

 

 

They fall together quickly, after that.

 

 

After all, Jonathan thinks, if he has told Arabella not to be a widow then there is no point in him being a widower, no longer any point in denying himself what he’s always wanted. 

 

 

Norrell seems to be of a similar mind, and Jonathan finds himself surprised by this, but then, gift horses and all that - so he relaxes into Norrell’s arms and catches himself feeling glad for the darkness.

 

 

\--

 

 

Norrell’s hands are soft and sure and warm, and somehow when Jonathan asks  _ why _ between ragged breaths and Norrell replies  _ Childermass  _ Jonathan is so far from surprised that he laughs.

 

 

Norrell laughs, too, and afterwards he curls into Jonathan’s side and says  _ I thought I would miss him _ .

 

 

\--

 

 

(Norrell calls him Childermass, once, when they are in the library and Norrell is talking aloud to himself about some spell or other - Jonathan is too absorbed in his own research to pay attention to Norrell’s musings, but then Norrell says  _ Childermass, would you-  _ and then blushes and corrects himself)

 

 

(it is only later, when Jonathan gets up in the middle of the night to write down something to look up in the morning, that he wonders if every time he thought Norrell was saying  _ Jon-  _ what he was actually saying was  _ John. _ He doesn’t go back to bed after that.)

 

 

(He sits on the chair in the corner of the kitchen, a draft coming through under the back door and a glass of less than stellar brandy in his hands, and makes himself think of Bell.)

 

 

\--

 

 

He stumbles into the library, exhausted and half drunk and tanglehaired, a few hours after what he’d established was probably dawn. Norrell is standing by the window, as is his habit now in the morning while he works up the ability to go and fetch himself breakfast, but he turns when Jonathan lets the library door bang closed behind him.

 

 

“I woke up alone, this morning,” Norrell says, in a tone Jonathan took a while to understand was less reproach and more concern.

 

 

Jonathan stands there for a moment and blinks at him.

 

 

“I think I miss my wife,” he says.

 

 

Norrell freezes, and then covers the ground between them in a few quick steps. He spends a moment just staring up at him and Jonathan wants nothing more than to kiss him but, but-

 

  
And then Norrell kisses him, and Jonathan knows he understands.

 

 


End file.
